activist example

Images operate the same way that memories do; images have this deep-seated attachment to your mind and I like to think that the images ingrain themselves into people...It really makes them want to stop for a ...

In 2012, market researcher John Wooley was dispatched to help the big ISPs figure out how to sell their vision for a "faster," "cleaner" Internet. Six months later he produced this report -- and shared it with the world.
A great example of using comedy to play the villain, a great narrative, ...

The term "escrache" comes from Argentina, where it was coined in in 1995 by the human rights activist group H.I.J.O.S, to condemn the genocides committed by members of the military dictatorship that had been pardoned by Carlos Menem, who was prime minister at the time. When justice ...

It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. ...

An "activist" just tried to pie Rupert Murdoch and The New York Times Blog put it very simply:
Unless the activist who charged at Mr. Murdoch wanted to help distract attention from his testimony -- and that of Rebekah Brooks, who is now giving evidence to the Commons select committee -- he ...

The Next Generation of New Urbanists yes, these are young New Urbanists, because New Urbanism has been around long enough that it's getting a little ... old and the Street Plans Collaborative want to help. They've put together a "Tactical Urbanism" guide that you can download for use when you ...

Duncombe and I have said more than once "you can change the laws, but it won't matter if the culture doesn't change with it." For lack of a better term, I'm going to call this – for now – a Culture Gap.
A change may be "the right thing," environmentally, economically, socially, for justice, ...

UCSD arts professor Ricardo Dominguez did not use school funds inappropriately, according to the findings of a University of California official investigation into Dominguez’s involvement with a controversial art project.
On Jan. 11, the UC system began investigating Dominguez’s use of just ...

Via Indymedia Ireland
Activist Questionnaire Results
This is an attempt at a summary of the results of questionnaires, interviews and a focus group at the Dublin Grassroots Gathering in June 2008 on the theme of what is winning in horizontal activism. This was done to hopefully be part of ...

The infamous westboro baptist church visited San Francisco.
WBC’s hate-promoting signs were answered by multiple signs of randomness, nonsensical yelling, and even a unicorn. A portable stereo blared Lady GaGa, while press and people passing by ignored the WBC signs and took pictures and ...

Have No Fear the Community Avengers are Here!
As the right wing mob mobilizes to shut down democratic debate on health care reform; as Van Jones is forced from the White House through distortions of the truth and plays on racial and political fears; as the recession deepens - the masked ...

Gihan Perera: Grounding our Inner Leadership
Spirit & Sustainability Profile
"In so much of my political work, the benchmark of that was external. It was intellectual, and I mentally related it to my impact on objective conditions. However, so much of what I felt about my larger purpose was ...

Ok, I am kinda lovin' Jay Smooth right now.
Success means that we move further towards the ideals. Victories are only evidence that progress is possible, and that we are moving further towards those ideals.
So measuring success is acknowledging the victories along the way, and realizing ...

apparently I added the wrong video the last time I tried to do this, so let me try again.
Mainly for Jay and Duncombe. I think at the core, one of the things he's talking about, is if all that work getting Obama elected actually ...

This guy is great. He saw an opportunity and jumped on it, disrupting a corrupt auction, costing major corporations money, and drawing attention to an issue that easily could have been buried under the mountain of year-end top 10 lists and countless other examples of Bush Administration ...

Not effective: Simply drawing attention to yourself. Yelling at him at a political rally. Flipping him off.
Effective: throwing a shoe at him and the press asking questions.
Conclusions: The more unusual things one does that stray from U.S. norms and culture that cause the press to ask ...

Not everyone has much faith in art-activism, but you can't please 'em all. Do symbolic protests accomplish anything more than raising morale for the protesters? If not is it enough to simply raise morale? Or do actions like this War prank create temporary autonomous zones and manifest, albeit ...

Bill Ayers on Fresh Air with Terry Gross
This is an except from the end of the interview that I thought was relevant to the questions we're asking in How to Win.
Gross: Do you think some of the tactics that you took on were in some part this youthful expression of anger, something that only ...

In recent weeks, I've ended up more than once amid marketing executives discussing, with apparent seriousness, what the purveyors of ordinary products can learn from the campaign that sold America on Barack Obama. To which my response is, well, they can learn lots. As long as they, too, sell ...

My take is a little different. If anything, I think activists are already excessively focused on the media. People often judge the success of a demonstration primarily on how much media coverage it receives, rather than seeing demonstrations as a place to gain confidence, meet people and ...

Sinfest is both incredibly dark and refreshingly soft-hearted. The author, you can tell, is earnest. He doesn't hate the US, he loves its ideals, but he also has no illusions about its past crimes and current hypocrisies. Check out Sinfest daily.
via: ...

A bid by Bay Area anti-nuclear weapons activists and the New College of California to take over Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has been rejected by the U.S. nuclear weapons agency.
Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) out of Livermore, New College in San ...

MIAMI — When Sarah Silverman told young Jews to get their lazy rotund rear ends to Florida to persuade their grandparents to vote for Senator Barack Obama, one question loomed: Would they go?
This weekend was the first big test, a kickoff for the so-called Great Schlep, and so far, ...

“James is a unique voice in the world, who lives and breathes art and technology for the purpose of promoting and enabling freedom of expression for all,” said Nathan Dorjee, Director of Technology for Students for a Free Tibet. “His trip to Beijing, in support of the Tibetan ...

In 1970, a fourteen year old boy named Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Montreal room during their "peace in." The following animated short, I Met the Walrus, is based on a recording of their conversations. It was nominated for an Oscar for "best animated short" at the 2008 ...

This is a new video from 23/6.com a political-ish comedy site. The video is about a serious issue, but treats it in a comical-ish way. Which is a fine strategy if done well, but I there's just not quite enough substance here. All you really get from the video is that there's a terrorist watch ...

via: Miscellaneous Projects
Originally Written for Boot Print Volume #2 (St. Louis, USA)
Proximity to Politics:
A Review of Three Recent Published Dialogues on Contemporary Art and Activism
By Daniel Tucker
In an attempt to broadly survey the current terrain of contemporary art in ...

British Surrealist Group (1938)
We Ask Your Attention
From a pamphlet issued by the British Surrealist Group, designed by Henry Moore, London,1938
(reprinted in Art and Social Change, Will Bradley and Charles Esche, eds., London: Tate, 2007, pp. 110-114)
[From a pamphlet arguing for ...

William Pickens (1924)
Art and Propaganda
Extract from The Messenger, New York, April 1924
(reprinted in Art and Social Change, Will Bradley and Charles Esche, eds., London: Tate, 2007, pp. 74-75)
[A remarkably succinct and articulate explanation and defense of propaganda in art]
It ...

Is this art? Is it activistm? Certainly, the power elite are not shaking in their boots over such stunts, but this just viscerally seems right.
via: the Independet
By Guy Adams in Los Angeles
Friday, 27 June 2008
San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
The plant that could be renamed ...

Play is one of the earliest and most important activities of mammals; helping adolescents learn the skills they need to survive. Games take the free play of the animal kingdom and apply rules and constraints, which have the ability to teach and develop the values and beliefs of a culture. The ...

For the past four years, Critical Art Ensemble's Steve Kurtz has been a martyr in the world of activist art, the victim of overzealous FBI investigatory impropriety. The case against him was utterly absurd, Kafka-esque even. Thankfully,though, the judge saw reason this month and his case was ...

via: Time
When the culture began to change in the late 1960s — when the old one-liner comics on the Ed Sullivan Show were looking pretty tired and irrelevant to a younger generation experimenting with drugs and protesting the War in Vietnam — George Carlin was the most important stand-up ...

BERKELEY, California -- For most people, photographing something that isn't there might be tough. Not so for Trevor Paglen.
His shots of 189 secret spy satellites are the subject of a new exhibit -- despite the fact that, officially speaking, the satellites don't exist. The Other Night Sky, ...

This is great speech by journalist John Pilger on the powers and dangers of corporate media. I think what's most interesting about it is that he breaks from the Left/Right dialectic that plagues social change movements and takes liberalism to task for some of its crimes. The liberal Clinton ...

This is an old Eyebeam R&D Project. If you haven't used Fundrace, try it out. There's something amazing about having access to the information. But what is happening exactly? Accoutability? Transparency? What is the result? Maybe we should talk to ...

Q: Of the various projects the Anti-Advertising Agency has been involved in, which ones do you think have been most successful?
A: I don’t really know for sure. To know we would have to do what is done in any marketing campaign, which is an impartial evaluation — surveys, testing, etc. And we ...

Here's a pattern of tactics I realized have something in common. They all work by presenting a threat. Loss aversion, as it can be called, can be more motivating - using the stick instead of the carrot.
## Example 1 From Greenpeace:##
The ranking criteria reflect the demands of the Toxic ...

Blackmailing (not really) store owners by offering to bring tons of motivated customers if they will do the most to make their store energy efficient. Documented very well - including dollar amounts.
Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on ...